Leaders in Education about Diversity and Georgetown’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are circulating a petition to try to change the College’s core history requirements to include a more diverse array of options.
The group began circulating the petition last week, LEAD co-chair Zoe Marks (COL ‘07) said.
“Our concern with history in particular is that there are only three courses you can choose from, and we felt that severely limited student’s needs and interests,” Marks said. “We saw that as a weakness in the university.”
Under the current requirements, College students must complete two semester courses from among European Civilization I and II, History of the Atlantic World, History of the Pacific World, and World History I and II. LEAD and NAACP propose that one of the two required semesters should include the option to take a course in the history of a non-Western world region.
According to Marks, LEAD began investigating the history requirements last semester at 35 other universities and believes that Georgetown history requirements are the only “Euro-centric” ones.
LEAD researched institutions from the Consortium of Financing Higher Education, Marks said.
“COFHE is a group of elite liberal arts universities and colleges primarily in the East coast that Georgetown compares itself to. It researches financing and financial aid, so it’s a good ball park to bring up to the administrators,” Marks added.
LEAD surveyed 185 students in introductory history courses about the current requirements. More than 75 percent of students surveyed felt that there were not enough options and expressed interest in non-Western regional history courses.
“[These changes] are especially important because Georgetown likes to consider itself to be an international school…but the history requirements do not reflect that,” LEAD co-chair Jane Kim (COL ‘07) said.
On Friday, Marks will give the petition to Kathryn Olesko, head of the College curriculum committee. Olesko will then assist LEAD in distributing the petitions to other staff members.
“I think the biggest obstacle…is the complexity, especially because there’s not an impetus from the history department. The requirement is hard to change because there are so many people involved,” she said.
